Government disbands presidential intelligence unit

The government of the Central African Republic has disbanded a military intelligence unit in the presidential security services because of reported human rights violations, an official told IRIN on Wednesday. "The government has decided to do away with the institution that has had many CAR citizens suffer for years," Thierry Maleyombo, the government’s high commissioner for human rights, said. The unit has been accused of committing torture, rape and extortion. Maleyombo declined to give specific incidents to avoid jeopardising investigations into the allegations. The unit, known as the Service d’Enquete, de Recherche et de Documentation (SERD), was based in the Izamo Military Barracks in the capital, Bangui, where presidential guards are also stationed. SERD operated as part of the presidential security services and was in charge of jails where people could be detained outside any legal procedure. The decision to disband the unit was taken after five presidential guards allegedly gang-raped a young woman at the SERD office on 28 October. Following the rape incident, President Francois Bozize sacked the five guards and two of their accomplices from the army. "We have all the guarantees that the rapists will be brought to justice," Maleyombo said. When sacking the five guards, Bozize also announced that he had moved a senior police officer, Louis Mazangue, from the command of the presidential security guards and appointed him governor of the southeastern province of Haut Mbomou, a move political observers saw as a "disguised" sanction against the officer. On Monday, the country's main human rights body, the Ligue Centrafricaine des Droits de l’Homme (LCDH), denounced the misconduct of military officials responsible for human rights abuses. Chaired by a lawyer and current speaker of the National Transitional Council, Nicolas Tiangaye, the LCDH listed several violations allegedly committed by the military that remained unpunished. They include the killing of a secondary school student in August at Boganda Secondary School in Bangui; the rape of a woman in August at Camp Beal, another military barracks in Bangui; the killing in a Bangui suburb in September of a retired gendarmerie officer, and the killing of a Nigerian trader in September. The LCDH's deputy chairman, Nganatouwa Ngougaye, urged the government to take urgent measures to end human rights abuses by military officials and called on the victims who kept their ordeals secret to register with the LCDH for possible legal action. This was the first time that a human rights organisation publicly criticised the army's rights violations. Most human right abuses were reported to have been perpetrated by former rebels who fought for Bozize during his six-month rebellion that culminated in his overthrowing President Ange-Felix Patasse on 15 March. "Assured of total impunity, they terrorise the population, commit armed robbery and kill," the LCDH reported. Meantime, a 10-day seminar on techniques of writing human right reports ended on Wednesday in Bangui. Organised and sponsored by the UN Peace-building Office (BONUCA), the seminar was attended by 30 participants, mostly ministerial reporting aides and lawyers. A UN human rights expert, Yollande Diallo, instructed the participants on basic human right principles, the different approaches to human rights protection and promotion, and on report writing techniques. During the closing ceremony presided over by Prime Minister Abel Goumba, the UN secretary-general’s representative in the country, Lamine Cisse, said that the aim of the seminar was "to enable the CAR to submit, in the near future, a report to the UN Human Right Committee". He said that since the country's ratification of the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights in May 1981, the government had so far failed to submit a single report on the human rights situation in the country.